This Wednesday, the German government announced that it is drafting a bill that would establish a new right to information for people from whom works expropriated by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, or their legal successors, were taken, which would facilitate progress of the claims of victims or relatives.
The Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann issued a statement explaining that “hundreds of thousands of cultural artifacts were illegally confiscated from their owners,” and that this action had been part of Nazism's extermination policy against the Jews.
From now on, if the bill is approved, anyone putting works on the market will have to provide the names and addresses of previous sellers, buyers and clients, as well as available information about the provenance of the item.
From this, it is hoped that the information will help determine whether the people who claim are the legitimate owners of the work.
The new legislation would also suspend the statute of limitations, currently 30 years in most cases, for the return of works of art, unless the defendant acquired the object without knowledge of its origin.